The Sunday News
Phathisa Nyathi
-Continued from last week
In order to facilitate their new roles in powering new economies of South Africa, they acquired ox-wagons with which they transported produce to the mining compounds.
In order to increase acreage under cultivation, they purchased ox-drawn ploughs. They had indeed become farmers and traders of repute.
However, it was their proven loyalty to the British that led to some of them being recruited by Cecil John Rhodes who had acquired the Southern Rhodesian colony for his British South Africa Company. As individuals, some of the Mfengu came to what is today Zimbabwe. In May 1898, Rhodes was arranging logistics to bring them to Southern Rhodesia.
For that he sent Francis Robert Thompson who, together with Charles Dunnel Rudd and Rochfort McGuire, had secured a concession from King Lobhengula of the Ndebele nation.
The ever cunning Rhodes made, through Thompson, a verbal promise to the Mfengu concerning what they were going to get if they agreed to go and settle in Southern Rhodesia at three locations, namely Mbembesi, Nyamandlovu and Matobo. Many families showed interest to make a move to Southern Rhodesia. Scouting teams to the northern British territory made glowing reports of what they had found.
Each man was to work for three months in a year and, after accumulating 36 months of labour, would be given five morgen of land. The promised incentives could not be resisted. The first group of the Mfengu boarded the train to Bulawayo, via Mafikeng, in 1899. The second group made the trip the following year, 1900. The two groups were settled in Mbembesi, in what came to be known as the “Fingo Location.”
In Grahamstown there was also a “Fingo Location.” Fingo Location, considered a Native Purchase Area (NPA), was located where the upper reaches of the Mbembesi River cross the Bulawayo-Harare road.
Even prior to settlement in 1899/1900, some Mfengu military collaborators had assisted the BSAC to fight the Ndebele in 1893 and again in 1896. Notable among these military campaigners, known as the “Cape Boys” was John Grootboom (an Afrikaner rendition of a big tree, Mthimkhulu) who assisted in both wars and during the demise of the Ndebele State carried a message to the fleeing King Lobengula, which message told the King to return and surrender to Rhodes’s forces.
However, the other group scheduled to arrive in 1902 did not undertake the trip as the Anglo-Boer war prevented that. Further, Rhodes died in 1902 and the Company Administration reneged on the verbal promises that Rhodes had made to the Mfengu as part of a package for them to create a cordon surrounding the Ndebele who were perceived to be a warlike people. Both Nyamandlovu and Matobo settlements did not materialise.
It is against this historical background that the Mfengu became an integral part of Matabeleland. They brought along Xhosa cultural traditions, the Xhosa language, commitment to Christianity and a passion for western education.
Over the years, they have been drifting away from the elements of the historic oath and from God. Now they are seeking to reconnect and reconcile with their Creator in the hope that the lost equilibrium may be re-established; hence the Mfengu communities from Marhawana, Madluntsha, Ngxingweni, Mantanjeni, Maqaqeni, Mbethe and Ndakana, et al, will converge on Elitsheni for a reconciliatory religious ceremony which will also be attended by delegates from South Africa.
Just who are the Mfengu and why did they migrate to Zimbabwe? The next article will deal with their identity and the motives, albeit not theirs, leading to their settlement at Mbembesi.
The people known as AmaMfengu to the Xhosa and AmaFengu to the Ndebele trace their origins to KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) during the Mfecane/Difaqane cataclysmic upheavals of the 1820s and 1830s. They are the people generally referred to as the Fingo in colonial literature.
The unsettled period was characterised by widespread population movements. Many of those who were forced to relocate to the land of the Xhosa were the Ngwane (Hlongwane and others) who had been under Matiwane, the Hlubi (Dlodlo, Mthimkhulu, Hadebe) under Mpangazitha and later Mehlomakhulu. Also included were the Bhaca, Zizi and Bhele.
On Saturday, the Mfengu-Xhosa communities from all over Zimbabwe will gather at Elitsheni in Mbembesi, just outside Bulawayo where they will hold a religious service meant to revive an old tradition that was discontinued in the 1960s when the Smith regime clamped down on public gatherings. The annual religious tradition was discontinued as far back as 1968. Then the Mfengu communities used to gather in order to renew their vows and commitment to the “Fingo Oath” which was sworn way back in the Cape Colony near Butterworth.
As a result, among these AmaMfengu people of surnames such as Khumalo, Hadebe and Dhlamini are found. While some of the victims of Mfecane found refuge in Lesotho, where the name Mpangazitha became Pakalita, the majority struck further south till they reached Transkei where they sought refuge among the Gcaleka-Xhosa. There they led a life of begging for food. The term ukumfenguza in IsiXhosa means to beg. They had, in fact, become scavengers. The term, no wonder, carries pejorative overtones and is not one that the now Xhosa-speaking people of Mbembesi do not relish. In some instances they served as slaves.
It was this sort of life fraught with hardship, destitution and repression that led to their exodus to the Eastern Cape, leading to the “Fingo Oath” that they swore under a milkwood tree, umqwashi. Following the exodus and the oath-taking, AmaMfengu became allies of the British, both in military and other terms. Besides, they had converted to Christianity and embraced education. When Cecil John Rhodes created the British South Africa Company (BSAC), he faced one challenge — what to do with the Ndebele who were perceived as a warlike people.
Even before the so-called Pioneer Column ventured into Mashonaland in 1890, there had been some AmaFengu individuals who had already ventured into Matabeleland and Mashonaland. John Grootboom had accompanied Reverend Charles D Helm (uHelemu) when he went to serve as a missionary at the London Missionary Society (LMS)’s Hope Fountain Mission. Rhodes wanted pro-British people to act as some sort of buffer between the Ndebele people and the colonists who had established themselves in Bulawayo.
The AmaMfengu were the right type of people to serve that purpose. They had vast experience in warfare, having participated in several frontier wars. Indeed, two groups did set off to settle at Mbembesi in 1899 and 1900. As pointed out above, no further groups made it to Matabeleland. However, Rhodes did manage to relocate two Ngwato chiefs, Raditladi and Mphoeng, to the Mangwe District of Plumtree, again in the hope they were going to neutralise the Ndebele.
Several families settled at Mbembesi and the following were among them: Mpengesi, Majozi, Radebe/Hadebe, Nyilika, Mbethe, Dywili, Nzombane, Hlazo, Sojini, Ndondo, Kona, Majola, Mniki and Khumalo, inter alia (Nyathi in Ncube, G T: The Dyke, 2018). The AmaMfengu had naturalised as Xhosa. Indeed, they had acquired Xhosa language, Xhosa customs and traditions including circumcision which has endured to this day. Their dress code is that of the Xhosa and, in recent times, cultural links with the Xhosa of South Africa have been strengthened.
The AmaMfengu have made several contributions towards spreading the Christian faith in Zimbabwe. Alongside the Christian seed that they sowed, they also made commendable contributions in education and both endeavours through Christian mission stations that they established such as the Anglican St Aiden’s. Equally, they made remarkable strides on the political front when they campaigned for enfranchisement of Africans through organisations such as the Rhodesia Bantu Voters Association created in Zimbabwe where the likes of Chief Garner Sojini and Martha Ngano were prominent. They assisted in the establishment, in 1934, of the African National Native Congress led by Aaron Jacha. Many more were active both in the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu) and its armed wing, the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZPRA). Good examples are William Kona, Neville Ndondo and Macloud Tshawe.
While next week they meet for the sole purpose of getting closer to God in the hope of improving the quality of social life and environmental conditions, it is prudent to take stock of the legacy that these people have indelibly engraved on Zimbabwe’s political, cultural, economic and social landscape.
